[nend]

I can't remember the name of the book I read this from so grain of salt/do your own research, but it was on the topic of why farming replaced hunting/gathering/migratory patterns.

One of the reasons mentioned was because despite hunting/gathering generally providing better nutrition (due to the variability in food), farming produced more calories. So the decision became (these number are made up) "we can farm and provide high quantities of poor nutrition to keep all of us alive", vs "we can hunt/gather to keep 75% of in great health, while 25% of the group dies."

Basically once a certain population threshold is reached the group has to enter a cycle of farming -> allows more babies to survive -> farm more. Your comment and this anecdote reminds of the capitalism cycle of consume more -> produce more value -> consume more.

If true, we've been unable to escape this cycle for thousands of years.

[JumpCrisscross]

> we've been unable to escape this cycle for thousands of years

Modern agriculture produces varied, nutritious and plentiful foodstuffs. It also produces nonsense filler. But it’s simply not correct to claim that we’re stuck in the tradeoff our ancestors made when they settled down to farm.

[nend]

>But it’s simply not correct to claim that we’re stuck in the tradeoff our ancestors made when they settled down to farm.

I mean we are because if we go back to hunting/gathering billions of people would die.

The point is that that at the time, farming produced worse nutrition, but despite that we couldn't go back once we started. There's a whole lot of other variables today that obviously prevent us from going back to hunting/gathering.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if we go back to hunting/gathering billions of people would die

And those who survive wouldn’t be much healthier. This isn’t a tradeoff. It’s a net gain. The original tradeoff was a worse but more-stable food supply. Today we can reliably produce nutritious food. No tradeoff.

[faster_harder]

Perhaps the book was "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari? It is a great read!